Ideas to Market | Product Discovery | Innovation

3 Tips Channeling a Negative into a Positive – Moving Forward in Business

Transforming the negative of your day or week into an upwards positive takes effort and determination. Last week one of my friends had (what I think) is one of the touchiest business situations to overcome, one of her freelancers filched a client from her. Yes, business is rarely nice or fair, but the blows that catch you unaware seem to be toughest to get back up from. Stuart Goldman explains why you should never, ever act from negative energy.

These are 3 tips I’ve learned for getting it all back together:

1.Shake it out/shake it off

While you might be a bit peeved (to put it mildly), breathe, take a walk around the block, exert some energy – what ever works for you to let go of the initial anger, stress and hurt. I’ve found getting out of my office, taking a walk and calling a good friend to vent works for me. You really can shake it off.

2. Make a list/Assess your position

Collect your thoughts. Consider your options. Make a list of pros and cons of the situation. Assess the impact and build a plan. Understand the financial impact of losing this client and what it will take to regroup. Perhaps this was a client who required extra management cycles, and distracted you from other tasks like growing your business. Or perhaps their departure will allow you to explore other markets (or customers) without concern of conflict of interest.

3. Do or create something that moves your business agenda forward

End your day (or week) feeling like you’ve moved your business agenda forward. Update the company blog, attend a networking event, or schedule the launch of a new project. Also, take advantage of this small dip in time to clean up old projects, organize your deskor client files that have been lingering. If you’ve been redoubling your business efforts, you might not have time later.

In the case of my friend, after she vented and told me how hurt and understandably upset she was, we spent some time reworking her monthly company business newsletter to better highlight some of their more lucrative client services. My friend’s goal in doing such is to push forward into a market space where her company has just begun seeing an upswing of interest, and to attract new clients.

Good or bad, a lost client took time, energy and resources to land. Even if the short term loss of a client can be overcome, the inbound costs of landing a new one may be even higher. Now is not the time to sit back and play the victim or be outraged over unfairness. Re-channel, refocus and prepare for success!

What’s the worst negative business situation you’ve had to recover from?